An audience with Apple's Steve Jobs

Yesterday Apple's CEO Steve Jobs sat down with Wall Street Journal reporter Walt Mossberg at the D: All Things Digital conference and had a cosy chat.

Yes, he was wearing a black turtleneck, and no, he didn’t reveal any amazing Apple secrets to the masses.

Talking about Apple's business as a whole, Jobs stated that Apple is involved in two businesses today; the Mac business, and the music business. Jobs said that he saw the forthcoming releases of the iPhone as Apple is entering a third business.

Jobs then described Apple TV as more of a "hobby" as many others had tried and failed to make it work as a business. Jobs stated that Apple wants Apple TV to be a "DVD player for the new internet age".

When questioned about any new iPods, "We’re working on the best iPods that we’ve ever done, and they’re awesome", said Jobs.

In a rare moment of humility, Jobs admitted that Apple is a new player in the cell phone business, saying "We’re newcomers. People have forgotten more than we know about this".

Although he wouldn’t be drawn on any as yet un-revealed features for the iPhone, Jobs confirm the iPhone will run "real OS X, real Safari, real desktop email". Through the Q and A session, he did revisit the third party applications question and said, "I think sometime later this year we will find a way to let third parties write apps and still preserve security".

Jobs brushed off the big 3G question for the iPhone and said the device will have a built-in Wi-Fi detection feature and that Wi-Fi is "way faster then 3G".

He said: "The iPhone is the best iPod we’ve ever made" and went on to re-iterate the music functionality that the new handsets offers, suggesting that other mobile manufacturers haven’t succeeded in the music phone market as they haven’t got the software right.

Jobs said Apple is on target to ship iPhone in America in late-June as planned.

On the subject of iTunes, Jobs discussed the fact that millions of consumers run the software on Windows machines at which point he said: "It’s like offering a glass of ice water to people in hell".

Talking about the release of iTunes Plus and the new DRM-free content, Jobs said: "Half of all the songs on iTunes will be available on iTunes Plus by the end of the year".